Tuesday, 1 November 2011

The waves of grief and the art of uncontrollable sobbing

Although I hadn’t planned on this being a blog about our baby journey or my miscarriage, I realize how much of my daily thoughts are consumed by it. When you want something this bad, how do you separate yourself from the process? How do you let it not become who you are? At a party last weekend, surrounded by parents, surrounded by kid stories, babysitter issues, pictures of babies on the fridge, a toy box in the corner…I felt like the eye of a storm. An awful, long, 3 year storm of grief. There’s no closure when you’re dealing with this sort of thing. There’s no coffin or eulogy to mark the end of a life. Friends and family who got pregnant around the same time as we started trying now have moved on to daycare, to planning a second baby, to teaching the alphabet and first words. While we are stuck at square one, reading the same chapter of the same book over and over again.

I used to think I could imagine this so hard that it would happen if I just manifested it enough. I walk by the room that is going to be our nursery and I imagine our baby sleeping in there, putting my ear to the door to hear the soft sounds of breathing, I look in the rearview mirror and see a car seat, I lay in bed and imagine a baby sleeping between us, I wake up at 3 in the morning sometimes and almost hear crying and actually have to stop myself from going into that room and pretend breastfeed my pretend baby. I feel like an insane person. Like I’m losing grip on reality. Do people like me get committed? Is there a Psychiatric Ward For The Childless and Losing It? No doubt the longing for a child is the most lonely, sad road a woman can walk. And although today may be one of my dark days, I hope I am ready to embrace that deep, primal yearning of motherhood and brave enough to see it as its own powerful entity within me.